Friday, November 20, 2009

Playing at Their History

Highlights from our timeline studies.The early Christian church. I read the kids some of the StoryKeeper stories about the underground church in Rome. To make it come alive for them, we closed all the shades and pretended we were having a secret meeting. The kids all listened intently.

Larkin kept checking out the window for Roman soldiers.

He informed us that there were soldiers at the door, so we made our escape through a hidden door.

Larkin got into it and started fending off the soldiers with his sword. Zahana and Rohan started to think maybe there really were soldiers after us, so we ended up leaving Larkin in the basement to carry out his battle alone. It went on for a while down there, but he finally emerged with all bad guys vanquished and doors sufficiently barricaded.We also watched a couple of the StoryKeepers movies from the library. Usually, we use books instead of TV, but it's pretty hard to find good children's books on the early church. I really didn't even like the StoryKeepers book (though the movies are great). I thought it skipped around too much and was hardly coherent. The kids liked it a lot though and keep asking me to reread it.At our library, you can make requests of books or movies for them to buy. I had tried this once and it worked great, so I asked them to get the Drive-Thru History DVD series, which follows Paul through his missionary journeys and talks about the early Christian church. They ordered it 5 weeks ago, but it's still not on the shelf. We're looking forward to watching that whenever it comes in.

The Golden Age of India.

Dhal, golden rice, naan, and chai. Also there was some ground beef, because I know from experience that the ethnic foods don't always go over so well. I tried to choose nonradical recipes and toned them down a bit. They liked everything except the dhal, which I expected. I liked it though.

As soon as I snapped their picture, they all ran upstairs to play "The Mayas and The Spaniards." After some screams of terror and a punched nose (an "accident" apparently), I persuaded them to play the quieter domestic side of the Mayan culture - farming, hot chocolate, music. That was much nicer. For everybody.

"In Charlotte’s philosophy of education, history is the study of people’s lives, not just dates and events."

“The end result of a Charlotte Mason education is the children ‘find knowledge so delightful that it becomes a pursuit and source of happiness for a lifetime.’” -Catherine Levison

“Charlotte Mason strongly believed in focusing on the story part of history while children are developing their powers of imagination.” -Karen Andreola

Wonderful!!! Oh, I miss those days and can't wait to do it again! With my older kids, 8th and 7th grade, it's just not quite so much 'fun' as it used to be. . .fortunately, I'll get to do it all again with my 2 and 3 year olds some day! :)